Alameda Journal deliveries shifting from free to fee

This Friday may be the last time local newspaper readers hear the familiar thwap of the Alameda Journal hitting their porches.

As of January 31, paper copies of the Journal and four other East Bay weeklies will only be available to people who have paid for subscriptions to the Oakland Tribune or West County Times newspapers, according to a flyer distributed inside the Journal’s January 10 edition. The paper’s current circulation is 22,900 (the Island has roughly 30,000 households).

The changes are part of a new subscription program that the papers’ management company, Digital First Media, rolled out in December – a program aimed at driving more traffic onto the company’s websites. A website offering all-access subscriptions to the company’s 38 Bay Area newspapers – 11 dailies and 27 weeklies – says non-subscribers will have “limited access” to the papers’ content online, though it isn’t totally clear what those limits will be. A Digital First spokesman did not return a call or an e-mail seeking comment.

Digital First Media chief John Paton announced the pending rollout of the subscription program in a November 18 blog post that talked about the company’s need to cut costs and build traffic and revenue online.